Seeing You With Open Eyes
by chinaink
Summary: They work together seamlessly, operate in such fluid tandem in the field and in the office, undercover and during operations, that it makes perfect sense they would fit together here, like this. Callen/Kensi.
1. I

**Seeing You With Open Eyes**

They work together seamlessly, operate in such fluid tandem in the field and in the office, undercover and during operations, that it makes perfect sense they would fit together _here,_ like this. Callen/Kensi. A love story in seven parts.

A/N: I started this story sometime last year and just got around to finishing it now. This is a Callen/Kensi story, and while I recognize this is a pretty peripheral pairing, there has always been something about these two together that has intrigued me. I hope there are still some Callen/Kensi fans out there, and if you are not one and choose to read this, I hope you can still respect my pairing choice. This takes place through seasons 3 and 4, beginning with "Crimeleon."

* * *

"_Sometimes you find them, or sometimes they find you. You just have to keep your eyes open." _ –Henrietta Lange ("Imposters", 2.23)

It's the tattoos.

Kensi is used to being used as bait. Lord knows, they had done enough of these ops, and she puts up with them with good humor. After all, these were the kind of ops that (usually) required a girl, and last she checked she was the only one who fit the profile on the team.

The stubborn, independent feminist inside her is inclined to take offense at being dangled like a juicy worm on a hook, but as she sashays into the Edison downtown, leaving a trail of turning heads in her wake, a part of her feels a delicious excitement. Most ops of this nature required her to blend in with the rest of the crowd, dress correspondingly to what other women were wearing, but tonight, the tattoos snaking sinuously up the length of her legs, twining across her shoulder blades and down her arms, framed by the plunging back of the Hetty-approved dress that clung to her every curve, had her on display like a peacock in heat. Kensi would be lying if she said a part of her didn't secretly enjoy it, the appreciative, heated looks sent her way by both male and female alike, fueling the rush of seductive power that runs through her. This job didn't leave her much time to enjoy the perks of being a beautiful woman in a city like Los Angeles, and if she had to rely on an undercover op to dress up and act like a normal, young, single woman, then she was damn well going to take what pleasure she could from it.

Case in point: within seconds of sitting down at the bar, a suave, handsome stranger approaches her and buys her a drink. She knows they're here to catch a killer, a deadly chameleon who could look like anyone, but her instincts aren't screaming at her when this guy looks her in the eye and hey, he was _cute_. Kensi knows Deeks is somewhere behind her and she can sense Callen watching her from across the bar, looking dark and dangerous in black, and she cheekily turns up the charm.

"Not him. I shot the guy in the face, he should have a scar on his right jaw. Cut him loose," she hears Callen tell her through her earwig. He's right but she protests a little just to needle him, and she can feel his eyes bore into her across the distance. Kensi meets his gaze for a quick moment and the strange intensity she sees there rattles her for a split second, sends an unexpected, illicit thrill coursing up her spine.

Callen turns away the next second, feigning disinterest and commanding curtly into his drink, "Lose him."

Kensi tamps down her flash of annoyance and does so without preamble. She hears Deeks chuckle and looks back at Callen, shooting him an _are you satisfied? _look, and sees him glancing down at the bar, trying to hide a smirk. She should have known Deeks would have a quick comeback to her play, and she rolls her eyes good-naturedly at the familiar, deliberate flirtation and cockiness in his reply.

"We could be in the car right now heading home, you'd be drunk, sitting on my lap, telling me how I'm gonna wake up with bite marks on my neck," Deeks taunts shamelessly.

To her irritation the image he paints sticks in her mind, and involuntarily she pictures herself draped across Deeks' lap as he drives them back to his place, pressing open-mouthed kisses against his neck. But just as quickly the hand that is draped suggestively across her thighs turns into Callen's hand, and she imagines what it would feel like to nuzzle her face against the rough stubble of his jaw, run her hands across the short strands of his hair.

_Where the fuck did that just come from?_ Kensi shakes herself violently and tunes back in to hear Deeks loudly declare that she wasn't his type.

"I am too your type," Kensi retorts automatically, and immediately wants to smack herself. She hadn't meant it the way it had come out, only meant that with the way she looked tonight, hell, she'd be anyone's type, and he'd be damn lucky if someone like her chose to go home with him and he'd do well to know it. Of course, it doesn't come out that way, and of course, Deeks seizes it and runs a mile with it.

"I'm sorry – what? Can I just get confirmation that we just heard that?" Even through her earpiece Kensi can hear the unbearable smugness in Deek's voice.

"I heard it," Sam responds.

"I heard it too," Callen says in that aloof, impatient tone of his, and Kensi suspects that she's just handed the boys fuel to tease her with for weeks to come.

"Kens." Callen's nickname for her has her looking up at him, and he meets her gaze directly. "Take a walk. Let's get you a little more exposure."

"You got it." Kensi gets up lithely from her seat, still grasping her drink, and brazenly saunters her way through the crowded club. She knows Deeks has his eyes peeled on her every move from his new vantage point by the bar and it's her turn now to be smug, but it's the knowledge that Callen is a few steps behind her, eyes drilling a hole against her bared back, that sends that startling flush rippling across her body.

She hears Callen and Sam comment on an admirer and jerks around in time to see the blonde creep following her turn and bolt at the sight of Callen.

"I think I might have scared him off," Callen says, catching her eyes, and Kensi can read a brief second of reluctance to leave her before he moves to follow the guy.

"I'll powder my nose until you get back."

She heads to the restroom and finds herself puzzling over the disconcerting way her body has been reacting to Callen's presence tonight, trying to figure out where it's coming from. Callen and her are colleagues, friends, have been for a long time, and yes, there may have been a time when she had a bit of a crush on him when she was a rookie and first joined NCIS, but that was partly due to her being young and impressionable and the sheer legend and mystery that surrounded him. He was a chameleon in his own right, one of the best operators NCIS had ever seen, a ghost – a man with a letter for a first name and no past. She looked up to him as a mentor, a leader, and now, a colleague. She's since lost count of the number of times they've gone undercover together and had to depend on each other for survival, and while Kensi knows she cares greatly about him, it's been a while since she examined those feelings closely and dismissed them as anything more than the distinct bond formed between teammates. But tonight – she doesn't know if it's the situation or the nature of this particular op, being put on display and attracting such blatant male attention, including those of her teammates – something about the way Callen's gaze raked over her tattooed skin has her responding in unsettling ways.

Kensi is so engrossed in her thoughts that she doesn't notice the tall, bearded man until he's nearly behind her, and then she silently berates herself for her momentary lapse in vigilance. _This is an op,_ she reminds herself.

The man moves fast, and as he ushers her through the back door of the bar and shoves her against an alley gate, pushing himself against her, Kensi finds herself caught unawares for the second time that night. The role of seductress is almost second-nature to her by now, but she's only ever had to go so far in the ops like this she's done; never had a stranger thrusting his tongue down her throat and forcing his hands under the hem of her short dress in a dingy, deserted back alley. He smells of cigarettes and tastes like ash and hard liquor, and his hand trailing up her thigh is harsh and unyielding. Earlier in the day she told Kallstrom that she would be prepared to kill without hesitation, and in the back of her mind Kensi knows she could probably kick this guy's ass twenty times from here to Tijuana, but the fact that she's actually being sexually assaulted right now shocks her senses into momentary paralysis.

She barely hears the snap of the switchblade he pulls out before Sam bowls into them, sending the guy to his knees with a brutal punch to his lower back. Kensi steps quickly to the side and tries desperately to clear her head, to focus, and when Callen bursts out the door, Deeks on his heels, she grips Callen's shoulder briefly in instinctive relief. Callen's gaze lands on her swiftly, coolly appraising, before he reaches over and grabs her assailant's head forcibly, twisting his face, checking for a scar.

"You okay?" Deeks asks her, and she can hear the concern in his voice, except this is when the adrenaline finally starts to hit her.

"Yeah. I'm fine," she tells him tersely, and watches as Sam and Callen search the guy, trying to regain her mask of cold impassivity.

Until the guy – Rinaldo Maggio – tells them that he answered a personal ad that paid him to take her outside and cut off her panties. That's when the disgust and revulsion sink in fully and Kensi covers her mouth at the realization at how close she had been to –

"He set us up. He wanted us to be here." Callen's voice dawns with realization at DeGramont's ploy and his face takes on the familiar preoccupied, dogged expression where he's rapidly scanning and assessing for potential threats.

With a shove, Sam sends Rinaldo stumbling towards Deeks. "Take him home. Get his laptop, check his story."

Callen barely spares her a glance as she and Deeks head towards the car, and Kensi manhandles Rinaldo a bit more roughly than necessary into the backseat of Callen's sleek Aston Martin when the valet finally pulls it up. To his credit, the guy has the good sense to avoid so much as taking another peep at her, judging by the death glares Deeks shoots him in the rearview mirror anytime he has the audacity to glance up.

Unfortunately, Rinaldo's story checks out, and they are forced to let him go at his apartment after sending Eric the requisite information. On the drive back to OSP, Kensi tries to erase the feeling and taste of Rinaldo's mouth on hers and attempts not to be sickened by her own inability to react more swiftly and appropriately. Kensi has plenty of confidence in her skills and abilities, and if there was one thing she's learned on the job, it was that it was no good to second-guess oneself after an operation. Things happened in the heat of the moment and you had to make split-second decisions in the middle of full-throttle action that made them fruitless to try and over-analyze later. Except – tonight, she didn't really make a decision or take any action at all. All things considered, the night's op turned out to be pretty tame – no bullets exchanged, she wasn't hurt, not really, and even though they didn't get their guy, they might be one step closer to finding him. However, Kensi is left with the realization that while she could be cool as a cucumber in the face of flying bullets, when confronted with a situation that probably happened way more often than she felt comfortable thinking about to defenseless women everywhere, she – strong, independent Kensi – had fucking _frozen_ and had to have Sam come to her rescue.

The disappointment and guilt leaves an acrid, stinging taste in the back of her mouth, and she can't shake a mental image of Rinaldo with a knife to her throat, slowly ripping her underwear off. She can't help the involuntary shudder that spasms through her, and Deeks doesn't miss it.

"Hey," he says, laying a hand gently on her arm. "It's okay. You're okay."

She smiles at him faintly, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude for the solidness of his presence next to her. Before long they're driving into OSP and she's inside ripping the dress over her head in the changing area, wanting nothing more than to be rid of it and changed into her regular, unassuming jeans and T-shirt. She wants to go home to her shower, scrub herself until her skin is pink and raw, tattoo-less, until she can wash the smells and tastes of this night right out of her skin. Then she wants to pass out until she has to come back in and possibly have to do this all over again.

It's already past midnight by the time she grabs her bag and swings out of OSP, but she bumps into Deeks by the entrance and he grabs her arm, steadies her slightly. "Let me drive you home," he says, and his eyes are earnest and insistent. It's been a long night, and Kensi nods, following her partner out to his car.

Deeks drives in silence for a while, but he keeps sneaking glances at her out of the corners of his eyes until Kensi finally snaps, "What?"

Deeks looks sheepish. "Just…I'm here if you know, if you want to talk about it."

Kensi swings her gaze back out the window, to the view of miles of uncharacteristically empty highway stretching before them. "What's there to talk about?"

"I know there's something bothering you, and I know when you say you're 'fine', you're really not," Deeks continues resolutely, oblivious to her attempt to shut him down. "I'm your partner."

Kensi sighs. Deeks _is_ her partner, but the reason they worked so well thus far was because the depth of their interaction consisted of banter, teasing, and the underlying, flippant flirtation that was so pervasive in their relationship. They didn't delve beneath the surface – like the way they avoided addressing whatever the "thing" was that was between them. They didn't share personal details with each other, and Kensi preferred it that way. Hell, she rarely shared private information with anyone, and she didn't see it changing with Deeks.

Despite how much she liked to complain about him, Kensi truly appreciated her partner for his levity, for his ability to make her laugh in any given situation, for his capacity to bring some light to her dark corners. She wanted to keep it like that, for a while; didn't think they were anywhere near the relationship Sam and Callen had, able to understand each other on an instinctive level. Truth be told, she didn't even understand how it was possible to reach that level of partnership, or what it took.

"Deeks," Kensi replies, flashing him a reassuring smile. "Thanks for your concern, but I'm fine–" She realizes what she's just said and huffs out a breath ruefully. "I'm _good_. Really. There's nothing to talk about."

Her partner remains mute, surprisingly, and it isn't until he pulls up to her apartment block that he finally speaks.

"Want me to come in? We could watch some _Top Model _reruns, you could demonstrate some of those bite marks I was talking about earlier," Deeks waggles his eyebrows and grins at her, and just as suddenly their old dynamic is back in place, and Kensi feels another rush of gratitude towards him.

"For the record, you totally could _not_ have picked me up, I'm so completely out of your league, and don't think you're coming inside again for a long time," Kensi retorts teasingly, but squeezes his arm softly before she gets out of the car.

Deeks rolls down the window and looks out at her for a moment, eyes searching. "You sure you're going to be okay?"

"Yes," Kensi rolls her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow, Deeks."

She knows he's watching her as she makes her way up the steps, waiting to see her enter her apartment before he pulls away from the curb, but she doesn't glance back. Kensi heads straight for her shower, and she stays in there for a long time, letting the steam and heat and the scent of her soap cleanse the remnants of the night away. She droops against the bright tiles of the stall, allowing her muscles to finally relax under the pounding stream from her showerhead, watching the water swirl away in rivulets down the drain.

When she's done, she wraps a towel around herself and steps out into her living room to find Callen sprawled on her couch, flipping through his phone. He looks up at her entrance, raises an eyebrow at her outfit but doesn't say anything.

Kensi starts in surprise, only to discover an immediate sense of ease and reassurance flooding through her at the sight of him, a reaction that she wants to avoid thinking too long and hard about at the moment.

"G, what's up?" Kensi asks in greeting, as if it's the most natural thing in the world for her to find him sitting in her apartment at 1 a.m.

Callen looks amused at her question, and he nods at the door. "Sorry, I knocked but you were obviously showering. Let myself in."

Kensi is fairly certain he probably picked her lock but can't find it in herself to be annoyed about it just now as she pads into her tiny kitchen. "Do you want something to drink?"

"No," he says, although he follows her into the small space, leaning against her refrigerator. "Kallstrom's dead."

"What?" Kensi straightens up quickly, tucking the towel more securely around herself.

Callen fills her in about the video and the follow-up calls he and Sam made after she and Deeks left. "We need to be back at OSP in a few hours."

"Okay." Kensi rubs her face tiredly, then glances at him, notices the way his eyes are startling blue in the fluorescent light of her kitchen, the way they're roving over the tattoos still inked across her arms, and all of a sudden she is achingly alert and acutely aware of his proximity to her. Without warning he takes a step forward and reaches a hand towards her arm, fingers hovering hesitantly over the area where the tribal design snaked around behind her shoulder.

"Couldn't wash these off?" His voice is low, quiet, and against her volition Kensi's heartbeat quickens against her chest.

"Makeup artist said it might take a few days to come off." Kensi nearly jumps as his fingers make contact with her skin, at the electricity that sizzles from his fingertips straight to somewhere in her gut.

"Callen," she manages to bite out, trying in vain to ignore the humming of her body. "Were you just here to tell me about Kallstrom? You could have just called." Her voice sounds entirely too high-pitched to her own ears.

He shrugs noncommittally. "I was in the neighborhood."

Kensi quirks an eyebrow at him, waiting. He meets her eyes and sighs. "Guess I wanted to make sure you were okay. I know the op tonight might have been…uncomfortable."

Kensi focuses on his words and feels a sharp surge of irritation rise to the surface. "What's with you boys tonight? I don't need you and Deeks asking me if I'm okay every five minutes, checking to see if I'm going to fall apart – I don't need you guys coming to my rescue, because I'm sure as hell not some damsel in distress."

Kensi's words come out jagged and she glares at the man in front of her, but he merely stares at her in silence, and after a moment the discerning blue of his eyes has her dropping her gaze and exhaling a long breath. It was hard to hide from Callen, especially when she was in the direct path of that knowing, shrewd look of his. It was part of the reason they worked so well together in the field, why they could communicate tacitly with a single look. On some fundamental level they understood each other: understood the walls each threw up as impenetrable defenses; understood the gaping holes that lay behind those walls. But with Callen, Kensi was slowly realizing with trepidation, maybe her walls weren't as impenetrable as she thought, and maybe that explained some of her behavior tonight.

"I'm used to guys wanting to hit me. Kill me. I can handle that, no problem. I wasn't expecting a guy to assault me in that–that way, and when he told us what he was planning to do – I guess I was caught off guard," Kensi admits quietly, with a measure of chagrin. "I should have reacted faster."

"Kens," Callen's fingers close around her arm, warm and firm. "You were always going to be all right. Sam, Deeks and I were right behind you, the whole time."

"I know. But I didn't need Sam to rescue me. I don't want you to think I can't handle myself in a situation like that."

Callen looks surprised at that. "I don't. I wouldn't ever." He strokes his fingers down along her arm, following the path of her tattoos, and Kensi barely suppresses the shiver that runs through her. He doesn't miss it.

"You're one of the most capable agents I know, Kens. Sam just had your back. Like we all do."

Kensi lets her gaze flicker over Callen's face, noting the deep shadows under his eyes, and she realizes with sudden clarity that he was genuinely worried about her, that what had driven him to her door so late after the op tonight somehow stemmed from some deeper emotion. And it's that thought that floors her, sends her breath hitching in her throat and anticipation thrumming through her veins.

"What I hate most about these ops is having some random guy's hands all over me. I feel like I can't get them off me for days," Kensi whispers after a beat, and her admission and the trust she unreservedly offers him alongside it astound her.

"I know," he murmurs, so softly she has to strain to hear him. "I hate that too." Callen takes a step closer, and Kensi wonders if he can feel the heat that's crackling between them, and she is intensely conscious of the fact that the only thing standing between them right now is a towel. It would almost be absurd, her and Callen of all people, mere inches separating them in her kitchen, were it not for the fact that she's watching his eyes darken to a mesmeric shade of indigo, pupils dilating, and it sends a pool of desire straight to her stomach, between her legs.

They stand like that for what seems like ages, hovering on the brink of an unspoken precipice, until Kensi takes the plunge and closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing a kiss in the hollow behind his jaw, her smooth cheek rubbing sensuously against his unshaven one. She hears Callen's low growl, and then all thoughts flee her head as he slides his mouth against hers.

This is nothing like their few undercover kisses, cursory and perfunctory. This is explosive and all-consuming, devouring them both, and if Kensi had room left in her brain to analyze anything she'd be stunned at the intensity with which they come together. He presses her back hard against the fridge, hands gripping her waist so tightly she thinks they might leave an imprint, and she runs her hands feverishly through his close-cropped hair. Callen smells comforting and familiar, like leather and gunpowder, and he tastes faintly of whiskey and something that's intangibly _Callen_. She can't seem to get enough, and she clutches him tighter against her, slides a bare leg between his, needing more.

"Kensi," he pulls away abruptly to whisper in her ear, breathing heavily. "Kens–"

She realizes he's got a hand on the top of her towel and he's implicitly asking for her permission. She unwraps her towel in one smooth motion, lets it drop to the floor, and takes primal pleasure in the sound of Callen's guttural groan as his hands come back to her skin, skimming over the tats on her back to land on the curve of her spine. His touch sears her and she actually lets out a moan, nipping at his ear. Callen reacts like a livewire, curling a hand in the tangles of her hair and yanking her head back, setting teeth and tongue down the long line of her throat, and Kensi shudders as she slips his jacket off, feverishly begins to unbutton his shirt, and he hoists her up against him, her legs wrapping around his hips.

He takes them into her bedroom, spreads her out on her queen-size bed, covers her with the length of his body, and time seems to stop. When she flips them and arches over and around him, she wonders if it was the tattoos that led them here, if having them still imprinted on her like a second skin was akin to taking on an undercover persona. Wearing them, she could pretend that she was someone other than herself; that they weren't Kensi and Callen, that they wouldn't wake up the next morning with yet more masks and secrets to tuck behind their walls. That they would be able to find their way to something more than this one night.

She wonders if there will be anything left after this fire burns through them.

Later, as they lay quietly together side-by-side, Callen traces the lines of her painted-on ink in meaningless patterns, up her legs, across her thighs and down her arms, and in a surprising gesture of tenderness after the heat and ardor of before, presses a soft kiss to her shoulder. Kensi lets her eyes droop closed, and thinks sleepily that she's not sure how they ended up here but she wouldn't have chosen to end the night in any other way. She falls asleep to the taste and smell of Callen on her skin, now.

When she wakes up a few hours later, the sky still dark outside her window, the spot beside her on the bed is cold, and he is gone.


	2. II

It was stupid.

Completely inappropriate on so many levels he's reluctant to even think about, and he can't believe he lost control, let it get that far; put himself and Kensi in this situation.

Except – G Callen doesn't do stupid. G Callen doesn't lose control; he is coolly analytical and unperturbedly pragmatic in the worst of situations. Most of the time. He's not sure what it was about that night – maybe it was the way she slid out of his car in those heels, the line of tattoos coiling up the sleek length of her legs, teasingly curving under that dress that left little to the imagination but just enough to remain completely tantalizing, or the way she looked at him in the bar –but it sent an unanticipated jolt of heat straight to his insides. He could barely keep his eyes off her the rest of the night.

He's known Kensi for years. Long enough to acknowledge and accept the fact that she's gorgeous and deadly, and could likely kick his ass on a good day. Long enough to concede that although there was a level of attraction, shimmering somewhere deep and out of sight, he had worked with her long enough not to have done something about it long ago. He likes to believe that initial attraction has been replaced by something much more tangible – a mutual respect and understanding, a bond forged in fire between teammates.

But when he saw the way she looked outside the club that night, the knee-jerk reaction to the scumbag that had pulled a knife on her, he knew something was off. Kensi was a pro; she didn't let her composure slip for anything, and he just couldn't get that shocked glint in her eyes out of his head for hours afterwards. The thing was, they had gone through such a shit storm in the recent years and months – starting with Dom, to Moe, to Hetty and Romania, to Jada and Sudan – that he was sometimes surprised to find that his team was still standing, still operating cohesively as a unit after everything that this job had thrown at them. _His team._ After witnessing Sam fraying around the edges after Sudan, he couldn't afford to have any of his people miss a step; to not have their feet firmly planted and heads in the game.

He told himself that was the reason he found himself driving onto Kensi's street past midnight, the reason he picked her lock and slipped inside her apartment. He wanted to check up on his agent, make sure she cleared to operate the next day. It was his job.

Until he saw her standing in her tiny kitchen in nothing but a towel, looking somehow stripped down and more exposed than he'd ever seen her before, without the layers of armor and camouflage she normally donned for the office. He took in the smooth expanse of her skin, the inky swirls of pattern standing out starkly under the muted lighting of her apartment, and felt his mouth go dry. When she told him the reason behind her uneasiness that night, the way she felt tainted with the marks of other men after operations like these, he had felt a sharp surge of guilt in the back of his throat, at the decisions and role he played in sending her into operational situations like that. Yet a part of him still marveled at her admission, at the knowledge of what she was entrusting him with. In that brief, crazy instant, all he had wanted to do was erase those other marks on her, expunge them and make her forget – replace them with his own. The intensity of his desire paralyzed him momentarily, but before he could react she was already reaching for him, running teeth and tongue along his skin, and then he couldn't focus on anything but the feel of her body, her mouth, against his.

If he had any room in his head to think he'd be stunned at the explosiveness between them, the trail of sparks her hands leave against the bare skin of his chest as she unbuttons his shirt, the haze of absolute _want_ that clouds any logical, rational part of him, that narrows his focus to only her. He loses himself in the scent of her skin, the heat of her mouth, the scrape of her nails against his scalp.

Afterwards, as he felt her muscles relax under his touch, her eyes flutter closed and her breathing even out, he had gotten up carefully and let himself out. He had driven around aimlessly through empty LA streets for hours, trying to sort through the tangled mess in his head, before he landed back at OSP just as dawn was breaking, tingeing the horizon with a hazy, ruddy glow. He was still trying to figure out what he would say to her when she breezed in shortly after, Sam and Deeks following close behind. His eyes caught hers briefly over the heads of their two teammates and she met his gaze impassively before the op, as it always did, took precedence over anything else.

* * *

It was stupid. Fucked up beyond belief. Shouldn't have happened. But the funny thing is, even though he can brand that night as a mistake, he can't bring himself to regret it. Even now, two weeks later, he still finds himself thinking of it constantly, remembering the way Kensi felt under him, the softness of her skin, the look in her eyes as she came apart around him.

It isn't his intention to pretend it had never happened. He means to talk to her, address it, but there never seems to be the right moment to pull her aside as the cases roll in, as she leaves to chase down leads with her partner by her side. Then Granger decides to drop a bombshell across their desks and Kensi is being accused of murder, and everything else goes straight out the window. The knot Callen has been intending to unravel suddenly turns into a convoluted, jumbled mess, but this is the kind of situation they had all been trained for, and the team rallies together to disentangle what they can from a case that was bound inextricably to the past of one of their teammates.

Because one of their own was under attack, which meant they were all under fire, and nobody, _nobody,_ messed with his team. He knows what they did for him when he had taken off to Prague to chase after Hetty: turned in their badges, put their careers on the line without a second's hesitation and followed him unquestioningly to the other side of the world. They were too late for Dom, but because of that they had made sure to be there for Hetty, for Deeks, for Sam, and he'd be damned if he didn't get Kensi out of this unscathed, with her badge and reputation intact. He can't accept anything less.

Even as Kensi cuts off contact and strikes off irrationally on her own, while he refocuses his own investigation and steers the rest of the team to take logical, methodical steps, he understands all too well the motivation that lies behind Kensi's every decision; sees all too clearly the demons that are hounding her. She was fighting not only for her life but for the truth itself, and it was a burning hunger and desperation that kept her moving forward, reaching for those tantalizing answers that had been frustratingly elusive for so many years but now were within her grasp. After all, hadn't he done the same, dropping everything when he got so much as a whiff of a clue to his own mysterious past?

"Nothing is worse than not knowing," he tells Sam, and his partner turns to him with a knowing glint in his eyes.

"What if the answers you find aren't the ones you're looking for?" Sam questions sagely.

He tries to explain to his partner the best way he knows how that for Kensi and himself, simply finding those answers was enough. The search for them had shaped their childhoods and molded them into the people they were today; it had in many ways been the driving force behind every decision they had made as adults. It was the reason they got up in the mornings, donned their badges, slipped into the skins of others so easily, faced flying bullets, and got up to do it again the next day. All in the hopes that one day, they would wake up and find that precious thread to pull, the one that would unravel and bring the curtain down to finally reveal those truths they had sought their whole lives. For Kensi, that day had come, and he knew there was nothing that would stop her from pursuing that thread to the ends of the earth if she had to. It was why, Callen realizes with dawning uneasiness, on some level he understands Kensi even better than he understands his own partner. It's a thought that catches him, gives him pause, one he files away to be examined more closely another time.

When they put the pieces together at last and reach Julia Feldman's house, Callen has never been more relieved to see Kensi whole and for the most part, unhurt. She's wincing in pain as she comes down the stairs but her eyes are bright and there's a look of triumph in the cast of her head and shoulders. Peter Clairmont is lying prone at the foot of the staircase and that's when Callen realizes the full extent of what Kensi has just gone through, from living in uncertainty and frustration for so many years, to finally finding her father's killer, only to find the strength to walk away from him, leaving him alive and trusting that she would find justice in the system. He doesn't think he's ever respected her more than at that moment.

But when Granger abruptly shoots and kills Clairmont, a part of Callen can't help but be fiercely glad for Kensi. For never having to wonder anymore. For never having to be disappointed in the system. For the closure he hopes she'll find in this, the closure that he might never find himself.

After, when she finally gets back from having her ribs checked out and her debrief with Hetty and Granger, Kensi walks into the bullpen and her teammates are there to welcome her.

"How does it feel?" Sam asks.

Kensi furrows her brow slightly. "People keep asking me that."

Callen looks at her, notices the strain that still hasn't left her body, the shadows still clouding her eyes.

"That tends to happen when they care about you," he says to her, surprising himself. He wonders if she catches the undertone behind his words, the emotion he didn't mean to let slip.

For the first time in what seems like weeks, Kensi meets his eyes fully, shoots him a tiny smile. It does a funny thing to his chest.

"Well, I guess I know that things will never be the same for me. Strange," she muses.

"That's also a good thing," Sam says, grinning.

Callen glances at Deeks, who has been uncharacteristically quiet, leaning against his desk. He knows better than anyone what the bonds of partnership mean in situations like the one Kensi just went through, and he suspects that if Kensi reached out to anyone when she was on the run, it would have been Deeks. Callen doesn't begrudge him that; he would have tried to be there for Kensi if she had come to him, although after everything that has happened between them he's not exactly sure where – or what – they are at the moment.

He shares a quick look with Sam, and they take their cue to exit.

"See you tomorrow, Kens," he says as he brushes past her, giving her the space to sort things out with her partner.

It doesn't occur to him until he's in his car about to turn onto his street that Kensi's apartment is still a mess, and that she would in all likelihood go see her mother tonight. For some reason he can't explain, the thought of her coming back late, alone, to a ransacked apartment doesn't sit right with him. He debates internally for a few minutes, then pulls his car around with a sigh and heads back to the freeway.

Twenty minutes later he finds himself jimmying her lock and thinks wryly that he's quickly making a habit of this.

When Kensi comes home hours later, she finds Callen in her kitchen, rinsing and drying her dishes. She leans against the counter and watches him in silence for a few minutes before speaking.

"When Dom – the night we lost him – I went to his apartment and washed his dishes." She nods at the plate in Callen's hands, her eyes faraway, and he arches a questioning eyebrow at her.

"Even though I knew he wasn't coming back, that he wouldn't ever see his apartment again, there was something weirdly comforting about knowing that there wouldn't be a pile of dirty dishes lying in his sink."

Callen nestles the plate carefully in the drying rack and turns to face Kensi fully, meeting her multi-colored eyes, bringing her back to the present. "Kens, you made it. The day's over," he says firmly. "You're home."

She looks at him and nods tersely, before glancing around her tidied-up apartment. "I thought you said you were going to see me tomorrow?"

He shrugs. "I didn't want you coming back home to a pile of dirty dishes."

Her lips twitch and she looks around her apartment again. "How bad was it?"

"Let's just say you owe me for my services."

"Oh really?" Kensi crosses her arms defensively and jerks her head in his direction. "So is finding you breaking into my apartment going to be a regular occurrence now?"

He's trying to figure out if she's legitimately annoyed but then she smiles softly at him and he returns it with a quick smirk.

"How was seeing your mother?"

Kensi doesn't question how he knows where she was earlier, just gives a slight shake of her head. "Strange. I think it's going to be strange for a while, and we are probably both going to need some time to get used to being in each other's lives again. But it's a good thing, I think."

Callen observes her for a few moments, attempting to gauge her state of mind. Her shoulders are slumped and she looks exhausted more than anything else, and any adrenaline or sense of conquest she had been carrying around earlier has long since drained out of her. He knows the meeting with her mother must have taken another emotional toll, and though he is genuinely happy that she's reconnected with her mother, a sharp stab of envy passes through him at the thought that she had the reunion that would always be denied to him.

Kensi suddenly grimaces and clutches her side, and Callen is beside her instantly, supporting her shoulder. She's unsteady on her feet and leans into him instinctively as he guides her slowly into her bedroom.

"Let's get you to bed," he murmurs into her hair, and Kensi puts up no resistance as he helps her pull her shirt carefully over her head. He bends forward to inspect her bound ribs briefly, running his fingers tenderly over the bandages, and he feels her breath catch faintly before she nudges his fingers out of the way, her own fingers unbuttoning her jeans. She slips them off her legs and crawls into bed without a word. Callen covers her with her comforter and hesitates a second before he edges onto the bed after her, settling on top of the covers.

Kensi is out almost as soon her head hits the pillow, and he watches her steady breathing, the tension easing out of her features as she slides deeper into sleep. He only intends to make sure she is comfortable and safely asleep before he leaves, but four hours later he jerks awake to Kensi's violent thrashing.

She's still asleep, but her arms and legs are convulsing across her sheets and her eyes are flickering rapidly beneath tightly shut eyelids. "Dad," she mutters, "Dad – no, please, don't – _Dad!_"

Kensi's skin is clammy under his touch and he finds himself wondering exactly how many times she relives this particular nightmare. He shakes her lightly and she snaps awake instantly, eyes wild.

"Kens," he says softly, touching her face gently. "You were dreaming. You're home, it's over."

She stills and focuses on him, taking deep breaths. He brushes strands of her hair off her forehead, sliding his fingers down to her arm, holding her securely.

"You okay?"

Kensi wrenches away from his grasp and shifts onto her side, hair tumbling across her face. "Fine," she bites out.

He looks at her for a few seconds and is just about to ease off the bed before she turns around and grabs his hand.

"G," she says, and in the dimness of her bedroom he can clearly read the unspoken request in her eyes. An undercurrent of understanding passes between them. He knows too well how it feels to dread sleep, of feeling powerless to control the nightmares that haunted him during those unconscious hours and sometimes would bleed into the harsh reality of day. But he had trained himself throughout the years and these days he found sleep more elusive than anything else, and it was the way he preferred it.

However, tonight wasn't about his own demons, so Callen squeezes her hand and settles himself back against the headboard. Kensi lets go of his hand, but she presses her leg against his solidly, the heat of her seeping through the layer of blanket separating them, and doesn't move.

Callen doesn't fall back asleep. He watches Kensi's breathing eventually steady, the slow rise and fall of her chest, and wonders how she will feel when she wakes up. He wonders if the answers she's finally found will look any different in the light of day, wonders what will fuel her fire, push her forward, now that she's found what she's been searching for all this time.

When streaks of pale light begin to filter into Kensi's bedroom, turning the outlines and corners of her furniture into an indistinct grey, he slips off her bed and shuts her bedroom door softly. In her kitchen, he puts on a pot of coffee for when she wakes up, and leaves quietly out her door. He'll see her in a few hours at OSP, and whatever this was between them – whatever was going on – it could wait a little longer.

As he pulls away from Kensi's apartment and turns the street corner, he catches sight of the front of Deek's car pulling up to the curb he just vacated in his rearview mirror, and Callen smiles inwardly. Kensi's partner would undoubtedly wake her up, needle her incessantly, force food down her throat, and give her a ride to work. Even though she would hate the extra attention, and as much as she didn't need it and would complain about it – there would be no doubt that her team had her back.


	3. III

The funny thing about time is that it tends to get the better of you, especially when you keep putting something off.

He keeps intending to find a moment to pull Kensi aside, speak to her about that night, clear the air, but as the weeks roll past the more awkward the conversation seems, and he immerses himself in the steady rhythm of their days. The cases come in and the cases close, they leave to follow suspects and uncover leads, and the wheels continue to turn flawlessly; his team remains a functional unit, fluid, effortless.

Callen can almost believe that night so many weeks ago was a memory, but then he'll brush against Kensi as they cross paths in the hallway of the hacienda, or catch her gaze across the ops center during a briefing, and there'll be the briefest flicker of _something _in her eyes he can't quite decipher. His heart will do an odd double tap in his chest, and he'll glance away quickly, perturbed.

He lies awake at night in his quiet, spartan room, listens to the creaks and hums of the empty corners of his house, and thinks of her. For so long he has been extra careful around Kensi – first as the rookie of the team and then as the only woman – he has been careful to train her, careful not to treat her any differently, yet careful to watch her all the more closely because of those things. He has treated her like a sister, as just another teammate; teased and bantered with her as one of the boys. Except – one single night has turned all those things irrevocably upside down, thrown all those pieces in play up in the air, and Callen is unsure how to piece the fallen fragments back together again. Too many times over the past weeks has he berated himself for putting himself in a situation to fuck things up, not simply between him and Kensi but with the rest of his team, although to his immense relief the cogs still seem to be turning smoothly. He takes quiet note of the fact that Kensi hasn't brought up that night they spent together either, and maybe they didn't need to, after all. Kensi and he are consummate professionals and if she could put it behind her, so could he.

Still, he wonders if she ever thinks back to that night, and if he finds himself watching her that much more closely now, finds himself more acutely sensitive to her presence and whereabouts, he tells himself it's simply to make sure she's holding up okay after everything she's gone through.

* * *

It's a rare day when all four of them are in the bullpen together, no pressing cases to attend to, just time to ponder whether it was worth the effort to make a dent in stacks of paperwork and backlogged reports, and amuse themselves by listening to Deeks annoy the shit out of Sam.

"I know I saw that report like twenty minutes ago on your desk. If you're gonna steal a man's half-finished report, big guy, at least have the courtesy of finishing it up for me – I won't even tell Hetty!" Deeks grins cheekily at Sam and shuffles animatedly through a precariously balanced heap of files on his desk.

Sam glances at his watch and glares distastefully at Deek's side of the table, strewn haphazardly with papers and miscellaneous junk, brazenly encroaching on Sam's immaculately organized workspace.

"You call me big guy again and you'll be missing more than that report," Sam growls at Deeks. "I wouldn't write your reports if you paid me. Do your own damn work. How you've lasted this long without Hetty murdering you is a mystery to me."

Sam shakes his head as he looks across to Callen. "I'm out. Haven't eaten dinner with my family in weeks. If I get home before the sun sets today, I'll call it my biggest accomplishment of the day."

He nods a curt goodbye to Callen and Kensi and strides exasperatedly out of the bullpen, and Callen hides a smirk as he settles down over his own unfinished report. Kensi and Deeks' continuing banter fades into the background as he finally gets down to business, realizing belatedly that he's got nine cases to close up and submit to Hetty, otherwise his head would be on the chopping block long before Deeks'. It's a few hours later before he's aware of how quiet OSP has gotten. He glances up and rolls a crick out of his neck, noticing the darkness outside the windows and the lights of the hacienda bathing their desks in a golden glow. Deeks' chair is empty, but Kensi is still beside him, typing steadily on her laptop. She looks up at him and smiles.

"I ordered some Chinese," she says. "You looked like you were in a good groove."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Ms. Kensi Blye, staying late at the office. To what do I owe this honor?"

She rolls her eyes. "Thought you could use the company. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have to rewrite most of my partner reports with Mr. Chuckles over there." She nods her head in the direction of Deeks' chair. "Though I suspect it might be too late, Hetty already thinks I've been paying a 10-year old to write them."

They share a smile, her eyes lingering on his, and Callen forces himself to glance away, just as Eric saunters through the bullpen and plops a large takeout bag onto their desks.

"Dinner is served, lady and gent. If you'll excuse me, I've got some serious twitter, reddit, tumblr and instagram catching up to do!" Eric winks at them, reaching into the bag and helping himself to two takeout containers before skipping back up to the ops center.

"Half the time I don't understand the words coming out of his mouth," Callen remarks, distributing containers to Kensi.

"And yet we'd probably all be long dead if it weren't for the boy," she chuckles. Her hands brush his as she accepts a pair of chopsticks, and Callen busies himself with unwrapping his own pair. The eat in companionable silence for a while, each bent over their own work, but Callen can feel the silence stretch and lengthen, prodding him to bring up the subject that has been close to the forefront of his mind for weeks on end. He shifts uneasily in his chair, debating internally whether to broach it, uncomfortable with re-crossing some invisible divide he's not sure they've built up again, part of him wary of what her response might be.

Then Kensi reaches across him to the beef and broccoli container he's holding in his left hand and spears a piece with her chopsticks, and the absolute ease and absentmindedness in which she does it has him blurting her name.

"Kens– " he manages to utter.

She turns to him, brown eyes questioning.

"There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about," he begins. "I'm sorry I haven't done it sooner. That night with the Kallstrom op– "

He can sense Kensi tense up and then fall still, and he hesitates for a beat before deciding to plunge forward.

"I'm sorry that I put us in that situation – it shouldn't have happened. That night was a mistake. I should have known better, it was irresponsible and reckless of me and I wasn't thinking – I just want to make sure you were good – that we were good– " Callen trails off lamely, disturbed at the uncharacteristic babble coming out of his mouth.

Kensi remains still for a few agonizingly long seconds before she says softly, "Yes, it probably shouldn't have happened, and yes, we both probably knew better. But you weren't the only one calling the shots that night, in case you've forgotten. I'm not sorry it did happen, and it wasn't a mistake." She meets his gaze fully, boldly, and there's an undecipherable emotion in her eyes before something shifts and he can almost see the walls come hurtling back up.

"I'm good if you're good, G." Kensi's jaw tightens, and she shrugs. "Don't worry – it was a long night, got caught up in the heat of the moment, whatever you want to chalk it up to. You haven't fucked anything up, if that's what you're worried about." She flips the screen of her laptop down and begins shoving papers into folders. "Look, it's getting late and I think I'm going to call it a night– "

"Kens," Callen says gently, "I didn't mean– "

She places a hand on his arm to cut him off and shoots him a tentative smile. "I'm fine. _We're_ fine. Really. We don't need to talk about this anymore."

He looks at her, gauging, weighing her words, unsure how to proceed. "Okay," he finally says.

Kensi shuffles her laptop and folders into her shoulder bag and stands, gives his shoulder a brief squeeze. "See you tomorrow."

Callen watches her walk out.

* * *

He's always known he has a bit of a masochistic streak. Likes to push his limits, toe the boundary and see how much resistance he comes up against, then jump over anyway. Likes to torture himself with the what-if's and the why's. It's part of the reason he's so good at what he does, blending in, cloaking himself in other lives like a second skin; for the length of time it takes he _is_ that persona he takes on, fully believing in whatever doctrine or creed needed to accomplish the goal, no matter how warped or self-destructive. It's why he oftentimes finds it difficult to come back to himself after an undercover op, shaking off the cobwebs of rehearsed habits and practiced thoughts for weeks afterwards, peeling back the layers to try to find the pieces of _G Callen_ underneath.

So he understands more than anyone the sacrifices needed to do this job. The things they all give up, the desires and personal yearnings they all conceal underneath flippant facades in order to get up every morning and continue on. So deep down he acknowledges why he signed off on this particular op, why he was the one who planned and executed it.

Still, watching Kensi and Deeks play the happily married suburban couple strikes at a level of masochism he didn't even know he had, like watching an oncoming train wreck and being transfixed by the glare of its headlights, unable to dive away from the path of destruction.

They're on the hunt for Russian sleeper agents in the neighborhood and they've set up minimal cameras around the house, but after the first few days of watching Kensi cook and do laundry and make coffee for Deeks in the mornings, he hands over monitoring duties to Eric and occupies himself with catching up on other cases. Even so, he finds himself staying late at Ops, combing through video from the day's feeds. He studies Kensi as she sleeps, her partner beside her in the queen-sized bed, watches Deeks roll closer and his hand stray across Kensi's hip, watches as Kensi slumbers on. Snatches of their one night together pass fleetingly through his head: he remembers the arc of her spine, the inflection of her sighs, the warmth of her body beside his, and he tries so very hard to forget.

Callen watches Kensi and her partner grow closer, grow into their roles, playing house and make-believe, and he feels the twist inside his gut, the throb and pulse of an indiscernible ache buried deep beneath layers he long thought impenetrable. Yet he can't tear himself away.

He knows better than anyone how talented Kensi is at her job, how effortlessly she can slip into a role and live in it. He of all people fully comprehends exactly what that entails. But he sees the way Deeks looks at her, the way she responds in kind, and he finds himself wondering just how skilled an operator she really is.

Sam walks in on him one night on his way out, and raises an inquisitive eyebrow at his partner sprawled across a couch in a corner of the hacienda, laptop open to Kensi and Deeks enjoying a simple, intimate dinner.

Callen glances up. "Just keeping an eye on our happy couple," he says lightly.

Sam looks at him for a long moment, silently appraising, until Callen snaps irritability, "Weren't you on your way out?"

"G, maybe you should head home tonight. Been pulling a lot of late nights recently. Eric will let us know if something comes up."

Callen shrugs. "I've still got a lot of work to get through. Probably end up crashing here." He smirks at Sam. "Thanks, mom. I'm good here."

Sam gives him one last look and shakes his head slightly. "See you tomorrow, G."

* * *

Kensi does a pretty effective job of avoiding eye contact – or any sort of contact, really – with him upon her return after the completion of the operation. Callen's not sure if it's intentional or if he's imagining things, but he always seems to be catching the tail end of her as he moves around OSP: a glimpse of her ponytail as she exits the training room, a cursory greeting as she brushes quickly past him on her way out of the firing range when he walks in. For nearly a week, she's barely at her desk, and he tries not to notice the empty space beside him, does his best to keep his own head down and bury himself in work.

But then, of course, the shit hits the fan. He should have been expecting it.

One minute he catches sight of Kensi smiling, mouth open in laughter, Mike Renko mid-gesture next to her in the parking lot they cleared minutes ago, and the next second Renko is down on the ground, his blood all over Kensi's hands.

Hours later, he watches a visibly shaken Hetty forcibly compose herself after she hangs up with Kensi before turning around to deliver the news.

"Agent Renko had a cardiac arrest right after surgery. There was nothing they could do for him."

The announcement is a bombshell dropped in their midst, sucking the oxygen right out of the room. He can see Eric and Nell stunned, Deeks uneasy, Sam somber in thought, processing the implications and ramifications of the news. Callen doesn't stop to think. Wordlessly, he turns and heads straight out the door, doesn't stop until he's in his car and pulling up to the hospital, sprinting through the double doors, up a flight of stairs and into the surgical waiting area.

Kensi is crumpled in a corner chair, arms curled tight around her knees, and the vise that has gripped his stomach, his chest, for the past 12 hours clenches that much tighter.

"G?" Kensi looks up at his approach, eyes red-rimmed and face ashen, and she swipes angrily at her cheeks, moves to stand up. "We need to bring them in for questioning – they fucking did this, we need to – "

"Kens," Callen says, crouching down in front of her, laying a hand firmly on her shoulder. "Take a minute."

He meets her eyes, sees the tumult of emotions swimming through them, fury and despair and a slow, dawning resignation, and Kensi sits back heavily in her chair.

He's worked with Mike Renko for years, and they had all grown used to the man flitting in and out of OSP, cropping up and then disappearing for a few months on another assignment. Renko had been a more present fixture in their lives before Deeks had arrived, and Callen has carefree memories of the five of them – himself, Sam, Kensi, Dom and Renko – going out for burgers and beers after a long day at the office. Simpler days, he regards them as now. He knew Renko as a solid, dependable, decent man; someone who could be trusted to have his back and his team's. But he knows Renko's relationship with Kensi ran deeper – they had been friends, had built an easy camaraderie that could be picked up wherever it had been left off.

Renko's death shakes him, angers and horrifies him, but he thinks how it must affect Kensi on a different level. Callen pushes back his own anger, files it away to be dealt with and unleashed later on, and he can feel Kensi's pain seeping into the space between them, tangible and pungent.

"Renko," she whispers.

"Yeah."

He grips her hands and she heaves out a choked sob at his touch. Something inside her dissolves away, and Kensi leans forward and cries noiselessly, fiercely, silent sobs wracking her body, and she tightens her fingers around his, clutching on with startling strength.

Callen holds on.


	4. IV

It should have stopped with Sullivan. Should have stopped with Dom, should have stopped with Renko. But the irony is that it never does. It's a fundamental part of their training – anything can happen, expect the unexpected – Kensi knows it in her bones, knows unquestioningly that anytime one of them walks into an op they run the risk of getting shot or killed. Yet to experience it firsthand, to lose someone who you trusted your _life_ to, who you shared beers and gun-care and tradecraft tips with, spent hours on stakeouts with – that was a loss you never truly got over. And to have to keep experiencing that loss, each time just as heart wrenching and devastating, rips out another hole you try to tuck away somewhere unseen that can never be filled. It's no wonder she's learned to erect defenses a mile thick.

It's the nature of their jobs. They are trained for this, prepared for this, but not equipped for this. Each loss leaves every one of them a little more broken.

Now it was Lauren Hunter. In the short timespan Hunter replaced Hetty as Operations Manager, she had butted heads with the team, had been abrasive and icy, but at the end of the day she was still one of theirs. Kensi had watched in horrified helplessness as Marcel Janvier ignited the car bomb, Hunter frantically pounding her head against the locked window, eyes pleading with Callen, the snarl of flames engulfing her. Kensi can't get that last image out of her head.

It was too much, too soon after Renko. Too many losses these past years. Sometimes Kensi believes that if she stops to think, stops to breathe _(to feel), _she'll lose herself in the fear and anguish and bitterness. So now, she places one foot in front of the other, one day after another, keeps moving forward. Wakes up, puts on her badge, survives another day to do it all over again.

Except lately, she's been cast adrift, scrambling to find solid ground. Since the day she joined NCIS, the principal motivation driving her onwards was finding her father's killer. She assumed that once she had those answers, she could move on with her life, and everything would finally feel normal. She didn't realize how naïve she'd been. Mostly, she hadn't realized how _hollow _it would be, how fleeting the sense of triumph and vindication fade. In many ways she's left without a center, struggling to redefine herself, to find something to fight for. There are no more answers to be found looking behind her.

There are times, in tiny, reflective moments where she pauses, where she notes dispassionately that for so many years she's been a passive observer to her own life, watching the days flit by, waiting for something to happen. She waited years for Jack, waited years to avenge her father, and when the opportunity finally showed up on her doorstep, the answers she thought she'd been looking for only turned into more questions, more betrayals, more hurt. Kensi tell herself she's done with the waiting, done with the caution. Too much darkness in the world to step hesitantly.

This is the person she's become today: it's those moments of anticipation – trembling on a high-wire – when the bullets are about to fly, when a suspect is just about to bolt, when her body flies into action and synapses are firing too rapidly to process, those are the only moments when she can truly feel. The rest: just blips in white noise.

Tonight, Hunter and Renko are in the morgue, and Kensi enters the empty training room to see Callen pummeling the shit out of a punching bag. It's late evening and the lights are dimmed, and Kensi stands behind in a shadowed corner, taking in the sweat-soaked gray T-shirt, the play of muscles across his chest and forearms, the lines of fury radiating from every strike and recoil. Callen's punches are steady and methodical, but there's a jagged edge to him that Kensi can sense from a mile away, and she steps towards him, directly into his line of vision.

"Care to take it out on the real thing?"

Callen doesn't even blink at her presence, just turns smoothly and regards her pensively. Kensi sheds her tank top, clad only in a sports bra and yoga pants, and readies her stance. Callen's eyes are sizing her up, raking over her, and there's a predatory glint in them that sends a flush rippling straight up Kensi's body, the first surge of anticipation coursing through her veins.

"Don't think I'm the best partner to spar with tonight," he growls.

Kensi is already circling him, arms in a defensive position. "Let's go, G. Afraid to lose to a girl?" She darts in for a swift jab at his midsection, and he catches her fist and twists until she's pressed against his chest, the heat and scent of him momentarily invading her senses.

"Kens," he warns, but she's already broken his hold and spins away, jabbing an elbow into his ribs. Callen lets out a soft grunt, then blocks her next hit with ease. He steps back and then counterattacks with a series uppercuts and crosses, and Kensi ducks and sidesteps with practiced confidence, muscles loosening, blood singing. She and Callen fall into an effortless, comfortable rhythm, weaving a subtle dance born of familiarity and intuition. It's the same dance they do out in the field, out together on an op, Kensi realizes. It's the same dance they've been doing for years.

Kensi dodges a left hook and retaliates with a high roundhouse kick; Callen turns his body and uses her momentum against her, knocking her to the ground. In one smooth motion Kensi gets up and thrusts her shoulder against him, shoving him back a few paces. And just like that the cadence of their dance changes, as Callen charges back with a renewed attack, mounting a rapid offensive with sure, lethal combos, and Kensi loses herself in the instinctive movements of her body, blood roaring in her ears, riding the edge of his rage and frustration.

Callen drives her back until Kensi belatedly realizes she's hit a wall, and as she attempts to spin around and duck under him, Callen pins her, one arm heavy across her windpipe. She can feel the weight of his body pressed against her, hard and unyielding, their rapid breaths mingling across the few inches that separate them. He's looking at her, eyes a vivid, disconcerting blue in the dimness, and the turmoil of emotion she reads there leaves her feeling stripped bare and completely raw. His anger is palpable, leaching from his skin into hers, spiking her senses hot. Kensi waits for him to make the first move, waits for him to release her, watches his muscles coil and tense, but instead Callen roughly closes the distance between them, sealing his mouth to hers.

His mouth is demanding, unforgiving, seeking access that Kensi gives all too willingly. She wants to be angry at him, wants to push him away, but her body goes soft and pliant in betrayal, and she sighs into the kiss, curling her fingers into his shirt. Callen drops his arm and grips her waist, tugging her closer, aligning her hips securely against his. His hands skirt up her sides, fingers grazing the bare skin of her stomach, and Kensi shudders as he scrapes his mouth down the smooth column of her neck, biting at her pulse, kissing a bruise into her collarbone. Kensi snakes herself more tightly around him, carding her fingers through his hair.

She finally tugs him away, meeting his eyes, trying to find her breath.

"Take me home, G."

* * *

On the drive to her house he is silent, and Kensi sits besides him, wondering what he's thinking, wondering what thoughts are swirling beneath the layers of G Callen's impassive exterior. She watches the passing city lights flicker over his profile, wondering if they would be able to do this dance as well the second time around. Wanting to do it, over and over again.

Tonight, she is brazen and reckless, expectation and yearning slicking through her; ready to stop waiting. Ready to shed her masks.

When he pulls up outside her apartment she senses a brief hesitation, a glimmer of reluctance, but she takes his hand decisively in hers and leads him to her door. He allows himself to follow and as she squeezes his hand, Kensi knows the instant something in him shifts, the moment he makes his choice. In the end, it is a simple, unspoken decision made and accepted by the both of them: to move forward, to stop hiding.

Callen crowds her at the door as she fumbles for her keys, hands reaching out to bracket her hips, to claim her as his, and once inside she laughs breathlessly into his kiss.

"What?" He pulls back to look at her, eyes crinkling slightly.

"If I had known kicking your ass was all it would take to get you here again," Kensi teases.

He returns her smile, and the expression lightens up his face, lifting away the heavy weight of emotion. "Somehow I don't think you've won this round yet."

"Oh really?" Kensi raises an eyebrow in challenge just as he tugs her shirt over her head, backing her gently into the bedroom. Kensi pulls his own shirt off and her fingers tug impatiently at the waistband of his pants, and she hisses as they shed the last piece of clothing and he presses against her at last, skin to skin. They spill onto her bed, a jumble of intertwined limbs and racing hearts, and Callen uses teeth and tongue to set her every nerve ending afire. Kensi moans, arches under him, pushing herself closer, needing to feel him over, around, inside her. When he finally slides into her, she can barely move, barely breathe, because it's so effortless, so natural, _(perfect)_ and she chokes out his name as they tumble over the edge, together.

Hours later, she wakes up in the pre-dawn murkiness and turns her head, half-expecting to see an empty space. But Callen is lying quietly beside her, awake and gazing into the darkness of her bedroom, lost in thought. He senses her movement and focuses on her, his eyes once again a too-bright cobalt in the deep shadows of her room.

Kensi reaches out a hand to trace along his jawline, his early morning stubble rough underneath her fingertips. "It's not your fault, G," she murmurs. "Renko and Hunter. You did everything you could."

He doesn't say anything, but lifts an arm and drapes it solidly across her thighs. Callen will carry the guilt and responsibility with him, despite what anyone tells him, but his acknowledgement of her words is as close to an absolution as he will allow himself. Kensi squeezes his hand and her eyelids flutter closed. She's on the cusp of drifting back off to sleep when Callen says unexpectedly, "You and Deeks."

Kensi waits for him to elaborate, waits for him to ask the question, hanging heavy and viscous, between them, but he remains silent. She twists up to lean over him.

"Deeks is my partner. We have a thing that works between us," she explains simply, then pauses. "You and I – I'm not sure what this is but we've been circling this too long for it not to be real."

She looks at him, at the man she has known for years, the man who has blurred all the lines she has drawn and somehow found a way behind them, unwittingly. Kensi doesn't know exactly why or how this happened, but she knows with a startling clarity that she wants this, whatever this entails, and that knowledge simultaneously terrifies and electrifies her.

She whispers to Callen, "You see me."

Kensi holds his gaze, willing him to understand, to intuit the fundamental shift that's taken place between them. For a long time she had wondered if it might be Deeks, their cheeky banter and pervasive flirtation making it easy to play what-ifs, but in the end it makes sense that it is Callen she turns to, has been him all along. She and Callen work together seamlessly, operate in such fluid tandem in the field and in the office, undercover and during operations, that it makes perfect sense they would fit together _here,_ like this.

Callen tightens his arm across her thighs and angles his body around hers, cocooning her against his side. Kensi knows Callen is not a physical guy, equally likely to skitter away from displays of physical affection as declarations of sentiment, so his gesture is answer enough for her, a rare display of emotion and sincerity. She curls into the hollows around him, enveloping herself in his smell, his touch.

Callen runs a hand quick and soothingly down her back. "Get some sleep, Kens."

She places a hand against his heart, rhythmic and reassuring. "Will you be here?"

"I'm here," he says.

Her breathing steadies, and she lets her eyes drift closed. Tonight, she _feels_.


	5. V

When Kensi made the decision to become an NCIS agent, she very quickly understood that relationships were at the top of the long list of sacrifices demanded by her chosen profession. With the hours mandated by the job and the nature of her undercover work, it was almost ludicrous to think that there would be a man out there who would be indulgent of the necessary secrecy and lies that came with dating her. Kensi was okay with that for a long time – after Jack had left, she had been so messed up that dating was the last thing on her mind, and even when she thought she had healed, there was a part of her that swore she would never let anyone in that close again, never give anyone that power to hurt her. The few guys she had dated in the years after had been a game; she would amuse herself by concocting the most absurd cover stories she could come up with and seeing how long they would hold up before the guy in question caught on.

Callen was someone she did not prepare for, did not expect. He crept up on her, slipped behind her meticulously constructed walls like they were nothing, and by the time she even realized it was too late; fighting it was futile. She was in over her head before she knew she was underwater. When they finally collided it was akin to being rocked by an explosion, pitching her off her feet, unsure where she was going to land, the sound and color clearing the cobwebs and doubts from her mind.

Because it is like seeing him, everything, in a whole new light. Callen was a born operator, which meant being inscrutable was second nature to him, the real Callen buried under a stratum of adopted personas and characters. Kensi is partly convinced that there are times Callen doesn't even know who he is himself, the toll so many years pretending to be someone else has taken. But it's that layer of vulnerability running right beneath the toughness and illusion, which she senses so distinctly, that draws her inevitably to him.

She doesn't want to fix him. Rather, she grasps that vulnerability because it's the same fragility she finds in herself, has spent her entire life trying to suppress. They have both been such broken people, have come so far, that there was a clear-eyed recognition for the other, and maybe by coming together they might finally be able to unpeel those layers and emerge stronger. Maybe she's found what she's fighting for, now.

Kensi looks at Callen and it feels like a puzzle piece has slid unobtrusively, undeniably into place. There are no labels and nothing really changes – he was a constant presence in her life, even before, and they're both too professional to let it into the workplace – but now there's a different kind of understanding when they plan an op together, a subtle gleam in his eye when he looks at her, a new sense of intimacy when he brushes past her in the hallways.

As it is, Kensi is not that girl, so completely _not_ that girl, who agonizes and freaks out over not hearing from the guy she's sleeping with; over a hitch in an op, especially one they planned together, down to the last detail.

Callen shooting Marcel Janvier was a setup, and they had all prepped for the fallout. She knows he's a disgraced agent, suspended from duty, but not hearing from him after his night spent in lockup, and not hearing from him in the subsequent days he's lying low, is kind of, sort of, freaking her out. She knows he's playing the role of the disgruntled, discredited agent, cut loose from NCIS, and he can't exactly contact any of them, but Kensi's adrenaline is spiking and her chest is strangely compressed, her heartbeat a loud throb in her ears, every time she glances over at the empty desk next to her.

The evening they discover the Iranians have taken Callen, she spends the entire night at OSP, furiously working herself into a sweat-soaked fervor in the training room, then pretending to toy with paperwork afterwards, jumping every time Hetty's phone rings and trying to appear nonchalant as she eavesdrops. Nevertheless, Hetty gives her an unnerving, discerning look on her way out.

"Staying late, Ms. Blye?"

"Yes, um, I have a report to finish up." Kensi fidgets with the stack of documents in front of her, shuffling and reshuffling.

"I see." Hetty stands in front of her for what seems like ages, and Kensi can scarcely meet her eyes.

"Keep faith, Ms. Blye," Hetty says at length. "He knows what he's doing."

She smiles faintly at Kensi before she glides out.

Around 3 a.m. Kensi settles into the ratty couch, the same one Callen spent so many nights on before he had a house to return home to, and tries to catch some sleep. She wakes up with a jolt every hour or so, heart hammering, dripping in sweat, and eventually gives up and goes to her desk, scouring news bulletins. Surprisingly, the news of the shooting only appears as a footnote in a select few publications, and any video or photographs have been retracted. Eric has done a good job cleaning up Callen's trail, although there is still a nagging misgiving in the back of Kensi's mind she can't shake, warning about the fallout from this.

When Deeks rolls in a few hours later, following closely behind Sam, he shoots her a puzzled look that quickly changes into one of concern as he takes in her disheveled appearance, the dark bags under her eyes.

"Did you go home at all last night?"

Kensi gives a brusque shake of her head.

"What are you, doing a Callen impression now?" Deek's grin quickly fades at his partner's stony expression. "Okay then, someone clearly hasn't had her coffee this morning."

Sam regards Kensi contemplatively for several seconds, and as he passes her on his way upstairs, he clasps her shoulder briefly.

"We'll bring him home," Sam says in a low voice, and Kensi can only nod blearily in acknowledgement.

* * *

Deeks corners her at the shooting range as she's unleashing a firestorm from her Sig Sauer, a savage barrage of bullets tearing viciously into the paper target. He whistles as she cranks the target into view: 12 rounds dead center to the head.

"Remind me never, ever to piss you off again."

She gives him an exasperated look and Deeks grins widely at her.

"So who is it this time? The Chameleon? The Iranians? Our fearless leader, G Callen?" There's a slight hitch in his voice as he says the last word.

"You," she grumbles, ejecting her empty gun clip, popping a new one into place and preparing to discharge yet another round.

"Whoa, that's uncalled for," Deeks admonishes. "You can't say that until I've annoyed you today and trust me, I've barely even begun."

Kensi ignores him and lifts her earmuffs to her head.

"Hey," Deeks interjects, grabbing hold of her elbow. "I didn't even get an eyeroll for that? What's with you? You've been off your game lately, Kensi. It's kinda starting to creep me out. Wanna tell me what's going on?"

"Nothing's going on." She shakes her head vigorously at him. "I just want to get these assholes. Don't you?"

"Of course," he partner concurs. "And we came up with a good plan. They'll get what they deserve. Look, it's fine if you don't want to talk about it, I just–" He falters uncharacteristically. "Just curious, if it were me in there, would you be this worried?"

Kensi looks at him sharply. Deeks delivers his question in a jesting, playful tone, but she still hears the subtle tinge of uncertainty in his voice.

"Deeks –" She says in warning, in caution. "I'm not worried."

He looks at her dubiously, and she huffs in annoyance.

"You're my partner. You know I would."

"Right." Deeks clears his throat, and says nothing further as Kensi turns around and readies to fire.

* * *

When they finally receive word about the hostage exchange, the rigid compression in Kensi's chest eases somewhat as she exits the van, fists clenched, every muscle in her body taut and wired, and it doesn't fully loosen until she sees Callen step out of the Iranian car, looking slightly battered and exhausted but nonetheless whole and unfazed. Callen's gaze fixates on her and he heads straight for his team, stopping to exchange words with Janvier as they cross paths. Kensi expects Callen to greet his own partner first, but he steps past Sam and heads directly for her, directly into her arms, and she feels herself trembling with release, of everything that could have gone wrong but didn't, and folds herself into his solidity and warmth. His arms come securely around her and she feels him breathe deeply into her hair.

"You good?" Callen asks gently.

"I'm good," Kensi affirms, reassuring herself of his presence. He was here, now, and everything was all right for the time being. It was all they could ask for in their line of work.

"You?"

"Better, now." Callen smiles at her, then turns to his partner. Sam hands Callen his badge and gun and he accepts the items gratefully, tucking his Sig Sauer into his back holster. Kensi's throat tightens at how empty he had seemed without them. The one identity Callen always came back to, the one identity he belonged to, was as the leader of this team. Any other definitions that now existed between the two of them – they would have time to figure those out.

* * *

That night he brings her to his house for the first time, and as Kensi steps through the doorway she has the distinct impression that she is crossing into an inner sanctum, a place few eyes have seen. The very fact that he's brought her here speaks volumes.

Callen's house is starkly sparse and unadorned, bereft of any décor except a handful of unassuming pieces of furniture. She spies his worn bedroll in a corner, a jacket tossed carelessly on the back of a plain couch.

"You barely have any furniture," Kensi observes, surveying his dining room. "You don't even have a dining table."

Callen shrugs, watching her work her way around his home, familiarizing herself with the space. "I eat at the kitchen counter."

"TV? Coffee table? Shelves?"

"Don't watch TV, don't need them." He walks over to her and snags a finger through her belt loop, tugging her close. "I'll tell you what I do have, though."

Kensi looks back at him and smiles. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

"A bed." He wiggles his eyebrows at her, and Kensi laughs.

"You actually got a bed?"

"Couldn't sleep on a bedroll forever."

She winks at him. "Alright, give me the grand tour."

"I can probably do better than that." Callen grins wolfishly at her, and Kensi lets herself be led into his bedroom, noting with surprise that he does in actuality have a real bed, a big bed. She has just enough time to wonder in passing how often he actually sleeps in that bed before she's distracted by the feel of his lips on the back of her neck, the slide of his hands underneath her shirt. She stops thinking very quickly after that.

In the early hours before sunrise, Kensi jerks awake from force of habit and isn't surprised to see Callen silhouetted against the window, gazing outwards at the darkened, empty street.

"G?" She mumbles sleepily.

He turns and climbs under the covers beside her, reaching out to run a hand through her hair.

"When was the last time you slept through the night?" Kensi asks, her body slowly stirring back to consciousness.

Callen shakes his head. "I can't really remember."

"What do you do when you're up?" She asks, genuinely curious.

He gives her a lopsided smile. "Sometimes I practice Russian. I clean my gun. I go for a run." He hesitates for a beat, then muses, "It's strange, sleeping next to someone."

Kensi rolls onto her side to face him, studying his features in the pale gray light stealing through the window, slowly lightening the room.

"I was worried."

"I know." Callen looks into her eyes. "I'm sorry."

She stretches out her hand and rests it against his bare chest, feeling the cadenced pulse of his heartbeat underneath her fingers.

"Do you ever want more than this?" The question leaves her lips, unbidden, and almost immediately Callen's eyes take on a guarded look.

"What do you mean?"

Kensi remembers the words Hetty had once told her, so many months ago, which still reverberate within her. About one day wanting to hang up her gun, wanting to come home to something more than a collection of weapons. _Sometimes you find them, or sometimes they find you. You just have to keep your eyes open,_ Hetty had said.

She hadn't fully understood at the time, and she doesn't fully now, but she thinks she's beginning to. She's not ready to hang up anything yet – there's still so much she wants to do and accomplish – but something about the past few days, all the uncertainty and apprehension, has started her thinking, contemplating the what-if's and maybe's. She's teetering on the edge of something precarious, but when she considers the man beside her, she thinks she just might be willing to take the leap. One day.

_Sometimes you find each other. _

"Is this all there is for you? Do you ever think about what you want…after all this?" Kensi suspects she might be toeing a line, because whatever is between them is still fragile, undefined and wild, but her relationship with Callen has never been conventional, and she's not about to back down now.

Callen is silent for a tortuously long minute before he speaks. "Kens, I get that you were concerned. We have to put up with a lot of shitty situations, but you know the op comes first. You know whatever this is between us can't get in the way of that. You know what this is, what we are."

There's a veiled meaning in his tone that rubs her the wrong way, and Kensi sits up, irritation flaring. "I know just as well as you do what this job requires and demands – you don't need to remind me of that. That's not what I mean. So why don't you tell me then, G? What _are _we? What _is _this?"

Her words linger in the air between them, stagnant and weighted. She's pushing his buttons, challenging him, wanting him to say what he really means, hoping to hear what she needs to hear and hating herself for that hope.

"If that's what you really want, Kens, those things – the kids, the family, the shiny future – then I think you need to think long and hard about this," he says eventually. "If that's what you decide you want, I think you deserve every one of those things, I want you to have those things – but I don't think I'm the guy to give them to you. You know why I can't."

She does. And just like that, she can sense the defenses come slamming down, Callen taking refuge beneath his arsenal of guises and façades.

"Don't you dare throw this away, G. Not after everything we've been through," Kensi bites out, furious.

"I'm not. But I'm not sure either of us knows what we're doing." Callen swings out of bed, pulling on a T-shirt. "I'm going to go for a run, Kens. I need some air."

She watches him leave the room, a part of her wanting nothing more than to run after him, punch him for being such an idiot, yell at him. Instead she forces herself to stay calm, taking deep breaths, trying to ease the clenching in her gut, the knife twisting her insides.

* * *

They don't speak of it at work, don't make mention of the conversation at all over the next couple of days, skirting around each other with hooded eyes. But on Friday morning when she sits down at her desk there is a box of fresh donuts waiting for her, and she glances over to Callen standing by the coffee pot, who raises his mug slightly to her.

She reads an apology in his blue eyes; she reads, _I'm trying._ And Kensi realizes in many ways he's stumbling in the dark and just as scared as she is, and she thinks she might be okay with being scared together.


	6. VI

What the fuck is he doing?

It's a question he asks himself almost constantly now, because somehow he has strayed so very far from the man he has been his entire life. When did G Callen start waking up to someone beside him? Start missing her presence on the nights they spent apart? Start waiting for someone after long days at OSP, start making breakfast and dinner for someone, start sleeping through the night?

He can't remember the last time he was just himself around a woman. No aliases or lies built upon lies, just himself and Kensi and a comfortable sureness. Her head fits with a graceful familiarity against the crook of his neck and his arms come around her easily, and there are no words that have to be said on the nights either one of them comes back late from a stakeout or assignment, exhausted and worn, to find the other up waiting; no explanations needed when their phones go off shrilly at 4 a.m., calling them into OSP, and they groggily climb out of bed in tandem.

The unsettling thing about it is that it happens so effortlessly, so inconspicuously, that he's hardly even registered how entwined into his life Kensi has become. Every so often he has to check himself, make sure he's not stuck in some surreal dream, because a part of him still can't believe that someone like Kensi – someone as radiant, intelligent, fearless, kind – could still want to be with him, want to put up with all his fucked-up baggage. He's been a lone wolf all his life, someone who worked better on his own than in a team, until he had met Sam, who had reined him in, steadied him, shown him what it was like to have a partner you could trust. Until he had met Eric, Nell, Deeks. Kensi. Somehow they had integrated themselves inextricably into the fabric of his life, become an odd sort of family. He didn't really realize it until it just sort of happened.

He's spent decades learning to shut people out, believing he was better off solitary. The last few years have taught him that he might be wrong; the last few months alone, with Kensi, have taught him that there was an unexpected part of him that savored companionship, a part of him that curled into her embraces and that might actually be content with staying in on a Friday night to a girl falling asleep on his shoulder. It's sobering, and terrifying. With Kensi, he's terrified that he's forgetting how to be alone again. He's terrified of tainting her with his darkness. Of breaking her.

He knows that he and Kensi are playing with fire, weaving a dangerous web that could fall out from under their feet at any time. Yet he can't pull himself away from her, away from this bizarre, strangely contented place he finds himself in, despite the insistent foreboding that tails him on restless nights or during private moments when he sees her brown eyes soften at his proximity, reads the promise reflected in them.

He should have known it wouldn't last.

Isaak Sidorov shows up on their radar, and suddenly all the weight of doubt he's carrying, lurking just beneath the surface, crawls out of the hole he shoved it in and finally rears its head. Before he knows it, Sam's wife Michelle is back in the game, dusting off her Quinn alias and returning to a life she hasn't lived in years, and all of the fear and misgiving, the uncertainty and unease Callen's been holding at bay knocks him square over the head.

Michelle goes under, and Callen feels the first stirrings start to build when he stays up all night at OSP with Sam, watching him pound the life out of a punching bag for hours on end while waiting for word from her.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Callen has seen his partner angry, has seen him troubled and disturbed, but he has never seen him lose his shit quite like this before, and the effect is nothing short of unnerving.

It starts to build when he sees his partner, frantic and petrified, rush under the police tape on a beach in Santa Monica, sees his composure crack when he lifts the body bag to glimpse the woman lying prone beneath. When he sees Sam nearly drown Agent Snyder in the Pacific, all his rage and fear bubbling to the surface. When he is a front-row observer to his ex-Navy SEAL partner, a man who has withstood torture, kidnapping, bullet holes and Hell Week, come physically and mentally unglued after a single night of terror over the whereabouts of his wife.

It's the moment he realizes that he and Kensi have been living under an illusion, a bubble of their own creation. They are the ones who have been playing house, pretending everything was sunshine and gunpowder; pretending it was sustainable and they could keep going down this road, keep sweeping the shadows beneath the rug. Pretending that the bad guys would never win, that they could keep the darkness at bay with nothing but bullets and bravado.

Who is he kidding? He asks himself – if it had been Kensi in Michelle's place? He would have held Synder under the water and drowned him. He would have called off the op, shot Sidorov in the head the first chance he got, and pulled her out of there, nukes be damned, millions of lives at stake be damned, potential world war be damned, because there was only one life he cared about.

And it's that comprehension that stuns him, slams him to his knees and overwhelms him, sucks all the air out of his ribcage.

Sam Hanna is a stronger man than he is. Because he can't do this if the op no longer takes precedence. Because at the end of the day he's a commander, a leader, a solider. He carries an obligation, a responsibility, and he can't do his job if he's becoming someone he doesn't recognize.

Because the deeper he and Kensi get, the more he puts them, everything, on the line. The more they splinter and shatter.

"This is insane. What the hell is going on?" Deeks demands as they watch Sam stalk away up the beach, a dripping cyclone in black, Synder left sputtering in the Pacific behind him.

Callen glances at Kensi and her partner, their expressions of alarm and concern. He tries to slow the frenetic beating of his heart, the sudden spike of dread and premonition choking his throat, and he swallows hard.

"Wasn't supposed to happen this way. Working on the same task force, side by side, seven days a week, months on end – they fell in love." His gaze flickers across Kensi, and he sees the understanding bloom in her eyes.

There's a sinking feeling in his stomach.

* * *

That evening, he makes quick work of her lock and slides into her apartment. She's waiting for him on her couch, a glass of wine dangling from her fingertips, and she sets it down as he enters.

"I wish we had known about Quinn – Michelle – sooner. How's Sam doing?"

"He's okay. He's back home with his family."

Callen stands in front of her, struggling to find the adequate words, to untie his tongue, yet unsure how to proceed now, facing her.

"How about you?" Kensi looks at him shrewdly.

There was no point in pretending. Sugarcoating was never his thing.

"We can't do this anymore. I can't give you what you need," he states candidly, objectively, cutting to the chase.

Kensi freezes, then stares at him incredulously. "What did you just say?"

He shifts on his feet in unease. "There's no white picket fence in this scenario, no happy ending here. I can't give you that. I'm not the guy, Kens. You deserve someone who can give you everything."

It's as close to the truth as he can afford.

"Who says I want one?" Kensi retorts, skin flushing, two bright points of color blossoming in her cheeks. "Who are you to tell me what I do or don't want? How do you even know what that is? You _never _want to talk about this, you shut down faster than Deeks after a heavy meal anytime we even approach the subject."

Kensi stands up and takes a step towards him but Callen instinctively backs away a few paces. He sees the hurt, written starkly across her face, before she can conceal it.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Kens, we're undercover agents," he explains patiently, keeping his voice level. "We chose this profession, we're good at what we do, for a reason. People like us don't get happy endings. "

"No, people like us are the ones who need happy endings the most." Kensi crosses her arms defensively across her chest, glowering defiantly at him. "What are you really afraid of here, G? Because believe me, whatever it is, I'm just as scared as you are. Of an op gone wrong? Of going undercover and not being able to see each other for weeks at a time? Of finding me in a body bag? Or are you scared of waking up one day and realizing you might actually love someone?"

Her words hit home. He flinches, throat tightening, fists clenching by his sides. "I'm not going to put us through that."

"Because those possibilities are there, whether we're with each other or not. They're always going to be there, hanging over us, as long as we continue to do this," Kensi continues on, voice pitching. "You're not the only one here who gets to make a call. You're not the only one who gets to make a choice."

He makes himself hold her gaze, buttressing himself against the vehemence, the unsettling intensity he finds there.

"I choose not to have to do this alone. I choose to care, I choose to live, I choose to _feel_. When are you going to realize that you're allowed to be happy, G?"

"I don't get to be happy, I get to save lives," he says quietly, and she stares at him in disbelief.

"Don't do this. What we have – you and I – it isn't a game. It hurts too much, there's too much at stake." Her words are earnest, beseeching. A rare moment of complete unguardedness.

"I know. Why do you think I'm doing this, Kens?" he asks her, helplessly.

She slumps forward slightly, suddenly seeming small and vulnerable, and he wants nothing more than to close the distance between them, wrap his arms around her and make her forget, like he did that first night when she wore her tattoos, so long ago now. Like he did when he and Kensi first leapt into this tangled maze, tripped the ticking bomb.

He wills himself to stand still, tonight, watching her in silence.

"If you're going to turn your back on everything we've built the last months, there's nothing more for me to say." Kensi glares at him, her fury and frustration blazing incandescent. It's the glint of wetness in her eyes that momentarily paralyzes him, however. Because Kensi doesn't cry, not for something like this.

She slides slowly back down onto her couch, averting her face. "You should probably go."

He nods curtly, and takes one last, lingering look at her before he closes the door, silently pleading with her to understand, to forget, to be okay. She doesn't look up.

Outside, he takes deep gulps of brisk, night air, bracing himself against the hood of his car, registering with a dull surprise that he is unable to stop his hands from shaking.

This is heartbreak, he thinks. He's forgotten what it feels like.


	7. VII

A/N: To everyone who has stuck with this story, thank you so much for your support and patience, and for allowing me to dabble in this universe. I can only hope I did it justice, and I appreciate every one of your reviews. I hope you enjoy the last part, and I would love to hear from you!

* * *

It was only a matter of time before they caught up with Sidorov again.

Callen has barely slept in weeks, eyes bloodshot, mind reeling and disoriented. He lies awake at night, the thick, vacant silence stretching vast and interminable before him, missing the warmth of her, the sound of her laughter, the cadence of her breathing next to him.

When he lurches to the office, he finds the same blanketing silences there: he and Kensi have scarcely spoken, ducking around each other in the hallways, exchanging terse, halting pleasantries in front of Hetty and the rest of the team. Even Deeks has picked up on some of the overt tension, glancing between the two of them in wariness when they are being briefed on the situation in the ops center, Kensi deliberately standing on the opposite side of the room as him.

He assigns Kensi and Deeks to babysit CIA agents Snyder and Sobatino, needing some breathing room, needing to refocus on his own partner, who is once more unraveling at the seams with Michelle being called back to Sidorov's side.

His job is to protect Sam, keep him grounded and operational; have his back. What he doesn't predict is that Sam gets arrested, Hetty refuses to bail him out of jail, and suddenly the life of his partner's wife has been placed solely in his hands.

Except he doesn't get to Michelle's side in time. By the time he rounds the stalls at Venice Beach after a confrontation with Sidorov, Sam has already taken out Dmitri Greshnev, and heads straight for his wife, enveloping her in his arms. As Callen watches them embrace, Sam whispering into Michelle's ear, his wife twining herself around him intimately, some fissure splinters inside of him, and he has to look away.

Afterwards, once Sam has safely seen Michelle to their home, Callen waits for his partner outside, car idling. He slides behind the wheel as Sam emerges from his house and settles himself heavily in the passenger side.

"Granger's waiting to debrief," Callen remarks. "How you doing?"

Sam runs a hand over his face tiredly. "I'm good. Be better once all this shit is over."

"Yeah." Callen drums his fingers against the wheel, silently thinking, before turning to his partner. "You know she's going to go back under."

"I know," Sam replies calmly.

Callen eyes his partner carefully. "A few hours ago you broke out of jail to get to her, Sam. How are you okay with this?"

Sam clenches his jaw. "I did what I had to do. Don't have a choice, really, do I? There's a bigger picture involved here. I trust Michelle."

He's still for a minute, then chuckles unexpectedly.

"What?" Callen gives him a puzzled look.

"So how deep are you?"

"Excuse me?"

"How deep are you in?" Sam glances at his partner meaningfully. "With Kensi?"

Callen's eyes widen and he tries to generate a response from his scrambled thoughts.

"Pretty deep, I take it." Sam actually laughs.

"What–How–?" Callen manages to sputter.

"I'm insulted, G. You think I'm blind?" Sam cocks his head, daring his partner to contradict him, but Callen remains mute.

"You were about to blow a gasket during that op she went undercover with Deeks. Kensi was running on fumes when you were with the Iranians," Sam lists off his fingers. "The way you guys look at each other. The way you look at each other when you think no one's watching. The way you watch her closer than a hawk on an op. The way she overcompensates with Deeks. Hell, you were nearly_ pleasant_ to be around for a few weeks there." His partner smirks. "And now you two can hardly look at each other. Trouble in paradise?"

Callen rubs his jaw broodingly, ignoring his partner's gibe. "Does Hetty know? The team?"

Sam barely conceals a grin at Callen's implicit acknowledgement. "Nah. Deeks is clueless, don't worry about Eric and Nell. Hetty, I wouldn't put past. She's omnipotent."

Callen cracks a smile at that, and Sam scrutinizes his partner soberly as he gazes out the windshield, once more absorbed in his thoughts, somewhere far away.

"Marrying Michelle was the best decision I ever made in my life," he says, breaking Callen's contemplation.

"Sam, you've got a family, kids. It's different," Callen retorts, leery of the direction his partner is heading, but Sam shakes his head.

"It's not about that. She made me stronger, made me a better person than I could have been on my own."

"You wouldn't be in this position now if she wasn't in your life. If you didn't have to go out of your mind every time she straps on a gun," Callen points out.

"Maybe not. But the fact that I do – that's how I know I'm doing something right. That's how I know I can keep doing this job." Sam squints at him knowingly. "And you know it doesn't matter. You'd worry either way, whatever she did."

Callen sighs, raking a hand over his hair. "Trust me, we work better alone."

"Better for who? You? Or Kensi? Can you really make that decision for the both of you?" Sam snorts. "You haven't been alone for a long time now, despite what you want to think. For Chrissakes, my kids call you Uncle Callen."

Callen looks at him expressionlessly, and Sam rolls his eyes at his partner's obstinacy.

"I'm only gonna tell you this once, G. We've been partners a long time." Sam pauses, gathering his thoughts. "You're a statue. You've been frozen, watching your life pass you by, waiting for answers you might never get. You've got a shot at happiness and you're too chickenshit to even take it. Kensi's a smart girl. She knows what she's doing, she's not going to break. You really gonna walk away from this?"

"I'm not as strong as you, Sam," Callen admits frankly. "I can't lead this team if I'm compromised by Kensi."

Sam lets out a derisive scoff. "Bullshit. You're compromised by her anyway. You're scared of being happy. First taste of it and you bolt."

Callen is quiet for a long moment, mulling and formulating the one question he wants to ask his partner, the one question he's petrified of knowing the answer to.

He gestures towards Sam's house. "So is all this worth it? Even knowing she could disappear tomorrow, even knowing you might lose everything?"

Sam looks his partner in the eye. "Every fucking minute of it."

* * *

A marine is dead in Idaho, and Callen watches with unease as Kensi gives Deeks a box. Messing with Deeks is a competitive sport at OSP, but he's disquieted by the look in her eyes, the flicker of shock on Deek's face as he accepts the hunk of cardboard. He wonders what its contents are, but intuits that it isn't his place to inquire, that he was infringing on some sort of private rite between partners. Any right he might have had to ask questions, he's willingly forfeited.

Hetty sends him to a little town called Moscow in the heartland. It's freezing and barren but it's a welcome distraction, and it takes him away from the heated silences at OSP and brings him out of the disaster zone that is his head these days.

He meets Paris Summerskill, who's attractive and likeminded and almost as much of a lone wolf as he is. Callen's isn't expecting the chemistry that fizzes between them, and he examines it warily, cautious and unwilling to venture too close, and the few times he does indulge it, there's a keen sting of guilt in his throat. Paris is intriguing, but the way she holds her gun, the way she flanks his back in the field, the way she smiles at him – it's all wrong.

He thinks if it were in another time, another place. Another life, perhaps. Because all he can picture, all he can see behind his closed eyelids, lying awake and alone on the bottom bunk below Sam, are expressive brown eyes and a fearless smile; a girl who softened his hard edges, a woman who saw through the walls he spent a lifetime building.

Eric calls him early the second morning with an update, and unexpectedly transfers the line over to Kensi.

"Hey," she greets him over the phone, brisk and businesslike, and Callen involuntarily tenses.

"Hey," he responds. "What's up?"

"We found Santoso's apartment. Looks like it was a safe house for their cell. At least four of them. Eric's sifting through security cam footage now."

She fills him in on the rest of the details, and Callen hones in on her voice, guarded and vigilant.

"Good work, Kens. Keep me posted," he tells her, and then pauses, deliberating how to continue. He hears the hum and bustle of the ops center in the background, and then a muted quiet as she moves into another room.

"How's Idaho?" She asks at length, and he recognizes the question for what it is, a tenuous olive branch, and he grasps it with relief and gratitude.

"Cold. Nothing out here but snowstorms and Granger."

"That's unfortunate."

"You holding up the fort okay?" Callen ventures, a part of him wanting to keep her on the line, despite his better judgment.

"We're managing. Keeping Deeks on a leash."

"He open the box yet?"

"No." He can hear the smile in her voice. "And a hundred bucks says he's not going to."

Callen chuckles. "We ever going to find out what's in there?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." She sounds smug, a hint of her old playfulness coming back, and it isn't until this moment that he realizes how desperate he has been to hear it.

"Poor guy must be going nuts. You're breaking his heart," Callen says glibly, before he has time to process his words, and he instantly wants to smack himself. The line goes still, and he listens to the slight hitch of her breath, feeling a dull, throbbing ache somewhere deep in his bones.

They were both trying, but the old sense of ease is gone, careless words revealing the cracks and fissures underneath their masks more starkly now. He keeps having to convince himself that this was the right call, that he had made the only decision he could, the one that protected both him and Kensi. They were better off alone, it was what they _knew_, what they had been doing for years – except now that he is again, he's fracturing around the edges.

He thought it would get better with time, the persistent worry and second-guessing, but if anything, it's gotten worse. He's having trouble focusing, distracted by Kensi's whereabouts and his constant attempts to decipher the thoughts swirling behind her veil of stoicism, the messages beneath her silences. He can't concentrate on the case, and he concedes the peril he's inadvertently putting himself and his team in, the liability he and Kensi are slowly becoming. He remembers Sam's words, and thinks maybe his partner was right. Maybe they were stronger together than apart.

Except there's been damage done, and bridges to rebuild, to rediscover and re-cross. He's unsure of the way forward, lost and groping in the darkness of unfamiliar terrain. He thinks of all the things he wants to say but can't, all the things he should say but doesn't know how to, the words lodged, cloying and rigid, in the back of his mouth.

"Stay warm out there, G." Her voice comes across the line, dense and fluid, and he reads the meaning behind everything she isn't saying, either.

She disconnects the line.

* * *

When Red Team sets up camp back in LA, he goes over strategy and contingency tactics with Paris, their heads bent closely together over his desk, Paris casually resting a hand on his arm as she points out a weakness in the plan. He senses Kensi watching them surreptitiously, and when he glances over at her he glimpses the flash of anguish in her eyes, visceral and unconcealed, before she can temper it. She smiles thinly at him and and gets up abruptly from her desk.

He's not prepared for the nausea that hits him in the gut, or the absolute, dizzying certainty that comes with it.

He's spent a lifetime running, hunting for ghosts and afraid of leaving himself open to being hurt, to being _(human)_. He thinks of all he's missed along the way, of so many things lost and shattered irrevocably, of the price that may just be too high. He thinks of a life spent surviving in shadows, of taking one hesitant step forward and three decisive steps back.

He doesn't really want to do that, anymore. The game had changed underneath his feet; the stakes too great.

It was time to start living.

He's contemplating this after the case is over, and Paris finds him standing on the grassy knoll outside Red Team's trailers, staring off into the distance.

"Want to stay for dinner? Dave's not cooking," Paris invites him with a shy grin, her eyes flicking to his.

Callen looks at her, appraising, and shakes his head in decline. "I appreciate that, but Sam has a family."

It's a partial truth, the other half unspoken. He has someone he needs to get back to, someone to make amends to. A reason to return home, a reason he hopes is not broken irreparably.

"Tempted to run away and join the circus?" Sam asks innocently on the long drive home.

Callen scoffs. "Nah. My young and reckless days are over. Got a mortgage to pay now. Besides, they wouldn't want me."

Sam cocks an eyebrow. "You sure about that? Seemed like someone back there was plenty interested in buying."

"I don't date law enforcement, remember?"

"What's that make Kensi?" Sam's lips twitch in a half-smile.

Callen takes a measured breath in and exhales slowly. "Kensi's…different."

"She sure is." His partner grins at him and guns the throttle.

* * *

He debriefs Hetty and Granger back at OSP, after which Hetty pours him a stiff glass of Scotch.

"To another successful case," she toasts, and he clinks glasses with her.

Hetty gives him a penetrating look. "So how did you and Ms. Summerskill get along?

"Uh," Callen rubs his face tiredly, momentarily taken aback. "Good, I suppose. She's a good agent. Good team."

"Will you be seeing each other again soon?"

Callen narrows his eyes at her suspiciously. "No, I don't think so. They caught a case in Arkansas."

"Ah." Hetty's smile is inscrutable. "Just as I thought."

Callen takes a swig of his drink, waiting for her to elaborate, but she continues to smile enigmatically at him.

"Perhaps what you need to learn, Mr. Callen, is that sometimes the answers you're seeking are right there in front of you," Hetty remarks finally, gazing at him astutely. "Take it from an old lady who's had a lifetime to think about this, a lifetime intimately acquainted with regret: it's about more than the job, and there will come a time when you'll find it's not enough. When the opportunity presents itself, you should not hesitate. She will not wait around forever."

They stare at each other, and Callen understands with perfect lucidity that it isn't Paris she is referring to.

* * *

He heads to the training room. There are too many thoughts clouding his mind, and he has an urgent desire to work up a sweat, clear his head, figure out the next step forward. The punching bag is methodical and soothing, and he lulls himself into a comfortable rhythm before he's aware of another presence in the room.

Deeks is the last person he expects to see.

"Hey boss, working out some stress there?"

Callen grunts as he lands another punch, hoping Deeks will take the hint and leave him alone. He throws a triple jab and hook combo before he realizes Deeks is pacing restlessly in front of him, fidgeting on the tips of his toes. Callen pauses, holding the bag stable, and looks at Deeks expectantly.

"I came here to – I just wanted to –" Deeks clears his throat uncomfortably. "Look, I'm just going to say this. This has got to stop."

Callen arches an eyebrow.

"I know this is none of my business, but whatever's going on between you and Kensi, you need to fix it. I've tried to talk to her about it, but she shuts me out completely. She's moody, well more so than usual, unfocused, reckless. My jokes aren't even working, let's talk about a serious issue right there –" Deeks falters slightly under Callen's imperturbable gaze, then plows on heedlessly.

"She's my partner. I get that the two of you clutch your cards closer to the vest than I thought was even humanely possible, dysfunctional baggage and all that – and I'm not even going _near _you – but I know Kensi, and I know when something's wrong. Whatever's going on between the two of you, it's messing her up. And seeing as how both of you are too stubborn to do anything about it and are just going to skirt around the issue forever while the rest of us suffer…"

Callen stares at Deeks in incredulity. "What is this, a coordinated attack?"

Deeks returns his gaze blankly. "Huh?"

"Did Hetty put you up to this? Sam?" Callen snaps, irritated.

"No. Why would they?" There's a dawning realization in Deeks' expression. "Oh. Well maybe you needed a slap in the head."

Callen glowers at him and shoves off the bag in aggravation. "You're right. It's none of your damn business."

Deeks holds up his hands in appeasement. "I know I'm overstepping. But I just thought you should know. I know you care a lot about her. I care a lot about her, too."

There's a suggestion of some deeper emotion behind Deek's words, and Callen stops short. It was oftentimes easy to write off the LAPD detective as frivolous and superficial, and they had all been guilty of dismissing his flippant demeanor and incessant clowning. But Deeks' layer of armor and defenses were his jokes and insouciance, and he was as adept at hiding behind them as the rest of them. Chinks in that armor were showing now, and Callen senses the worry and concern peeking through acutely. He exhales sharply and faces his teammate.

"How is she?" he asks, earnestly.

"Well, she hasn't been sleeping much. She'll never admit that she's hurting, but I know better. She'll be okay, though, because she's stronger than either of us." Deeks gives an imperceptible shake of his head. "You should talk to her before it's too late."

"You know as well as I do that it isn't that simple."

Deeks hesitates for a few seconds. "I might not have been doing this for as long as you have, but what I have learned is that in this line of work you take what happiness you can get, even scraps of it. And I'm pretty sure you've been offered the whole damn platter. For some reason Kensi's chosen you, and that makes you one lucky man, G Callen. I'm man enough to know when I'm beat – for now."

Deeks looks at him boldly, an unspoken challenge in his eyes, and Callen meets his gaze unblinkingly.

"Sam should give you more credit," Callen reflects after a moment, a part of him amused by the younger man's audaciousness.

Deeks breaks into a sudden grin. "Nothing we need to share with him. Don't bench me for this, bossman."

"I'll take that under consideration." Callen smirks.

Deeks moves to leave, and it's Callen who stops him this time.

"How'd you make the decision, Deeks? How'd you let the pieces fall?" He's genuinely curious.

Deeks turns back around to face him.

"You look at everything that could go wrong, everything you could stand to lose. Then you look at everything you could possibly gain. There wasn't much of a decision." He shrugs. "Then again, it's not mine to make."

Callen ponders for the millionth time the risks and threats, the inevitable complications and struggles, looming large. Then he thinks of Kensi, and somehow she was enough to tip the scales.

"You're a good man, Deeks," he finally says to the detective, and Deeks shrugs again.

"She's my partner. I've got her back."

He makes his way across the room to the door.

"You open the box yet?" Callen calls out after him, an afterthought.

Deeks beams back at him.

"Nah. Some things aren't meant to be opened," he replies over his shoulder, right before he exits.

Callen props himself against the punching bag and begins to chuckle, uncharacteristic, aberrant snickers and chortles that turn into wild, uncontrolled laughter, deep heaving breaths that come from his abdomen. He laughs and laughs, at the absurdity of finding himself in this situation, at his own fear and foolhardiness, at being tag-teamed by his own team; weeks of tension and trepidation dissipating out of his system at last.

The sound of it echoes against the walls. When it dies off, he's left staring at the empty room, abruptly sober and strangely calm.

He's found his way forward.

* * *

It's late afternoon the following day by the time he finishes his errand and makes it back to the office, cradling a tiny box in his hand.

He searches the building for her, and finally finds her on the second floor, in a hidden corner of the hacienda. She's perched on a balcony gazing out at the dusky Los Angeles sunset, skin illuminated by the blaze of crimson and orange streaking the sky above her, wind tangling gently through her hair.

He steps up quietly beside her, and Kensi barely spares a glance in his direction before inquiring, "You bring donuts?"

"Something better, I hope." He lets his elbow lightly brush against hers.

"Red Team leave?" There's no malice or jealousy in her voice, simply inquisitive.

"Yesterday," he replies, gingerly broaching the subject. "So about Paris– "

Kensi shrugs wryly. "The op comes first, right?"

"That's not what– " Callen begins, but Kensi shakes her head as she turns to face him, interrupting without preamble.

"The thing you didn't bother to ask me is this: I wanted _you_. _You_ were enough. I was happy to take it one day at a time with you, as long as we were doing it together," she asserts doggedly. "Happy ending be damned_. _You think I planned for this to happen? You think I didn't do everything I could to try to stop? You and I should be too fucked up to even consider this, yet we found a way to each other. It's too late to turn back."

Callen waits patently for her to finish, then quirks an eyebrow at her. "Wanted? Or still want?"

He feels the stirrings of something that feels like hope, fluttering tentatively against his ribcage.

Kensi narrows her eyes at him, and he places his own small box in her hand.

"What's this?"

"Something that's meant to be opened."

He smiles gently at her, and she carefully eases the lid off the box, lifting out a key, its brass coating glinting dully in the light of the setting sun.

"It's to my house." Callen shoves his hands into his pockets, suddenly feeling self-conscious and unnerved. He hopes she understands his gesture, understands everything he wants to say but still doesn't know the words to, understands enough to forgive him. It's the only gift he could think to give her that would convey what he couldn't, how deep he's in, how inextricably entwined.

She stares in shock at the metal in her hands, and Callen waits an excruciatingly long time for her to speak.

"You're a fucking idiot, G Callen," she finally manages, and looks back up at him, searching his eyes.

"How do I know you won't do this again? Change your mind?" She asks evenly.

Callen gives a brief shrug of his shoulders. "You don't. But you can't tell me you won't either," he says reasonably. He reaches out a hand to cup her cheek, serious and solemn.

"No more masks. No more running. We both know this isn't going to be easy, and it's going to throw us places we're terrified of being in. We've lost too much along the way, Kens. I'm not going to lose us, too." He runs a thumb tenderly down her jaw, ghosting across her lips. "I want to do this together. I choose this."

Kensi considers him, a long, probing look, and he waits with bated breath and a quickening pulse, exposed and vulnerable, for her response. She understands too well the heft of his words, of what it took to bring him – them – here.

"So does this mean I don't have to worry about you breaking into my place again?" Her tone is somber, but there's a wry twist of her mouth, a spark in her eyes.

Callen grins at her ruefully. "Can't let my lock-picking skills get rusty."

Kensi reaches out both hands to frame his face, her expression etched fierce and resolute. He leans down, capturing her lips slowly in a kiss that is soft and poignant, communicating all his regret, all his repentance, all his joy. Callen circles his arms around her, feeling the smooth lines and tough edges that make up Kensi, the sunshine and the danger, feeling the hope and exhilaration and the ache he knows will be coming.

There are no promises pledged, no lingering assurances, because neither of them can give any.

It is enough, for now.

It is real.

* * *

A few weeks later he returns to his house late one night from an undercover operation and lets himself through his front door noiselessly, surveying his darkened surroundings. Kensi's jacket and sweatshirt are thrown haphazardly on the couch, her shoes piled untidily near the front door, books thrown on the new dining table they bought together. His lips quirk up in a half smile as he notes that her things are slowly migrating here, inadvertently.

He hasn't seen her in over three weeks, unable to extricate himself from his current assignment, but he's finally home, and he steps into his bedroom to find her sleeping peacefully, wearing one of his old T-shirts. He watches her for a few minutes, feeling something delicate and inexplicable turn over in his chest.

He sheds his clothes and crawls in next to her, covering her fully with his body, sinking gentle kisses into her shoulder to wake her up.

"Mmm, hello stranger," she murmurs, voice thick with sleep. "Welcome home."

He shushes her with his mouth, letting his hands do his talking for him, fingers tracing a line down her silken skin, allowing himself to melt into her familiar curves. Kensi responds unequivocally underneath him, bowing her spine, reaching for him, pressing herself ever closer. He buries himself in the taste of her, the heat of her, her pliancy and urgency.

After the fervor, when they're fused together skin to skin, bare, _(raw)_ and she's pressing languid kisses to his collarbone, he whispers against her hair, "You see me."

Kensi grips his hand tightly, and he waits until her breathing evens, her hands loosen, the quiet rise and fall of her chest providing a reassuring counterpoint to the steady beating of his heart.

Callen closes his eyes and succumbs to sleep.

-end-


End file.
